Let Consumers Sue Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/opinion/let-consumers-sue-companies.html <comment><USER2> In the EU you cannot bind consumers by such arbitration clauses: [http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A3...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A31993L0013)

Consumers can usually sue corporations at a court in their own jurisdiction. Many European countries also allow class action law suits. Yet, we have few law suits against corporations. There are other reasons for this:

\- consumers are not awarded punitive damages,

\- court fees are higher (usually a percentage of what you ask for),

\- if the consumers lose they pay not only their own lawyer, but (to an extent decided by the court) also the lawyer representing the corporation,

\- many European countries have consumer "watchdogs" / ombudsmen, i.e. public entities that have the authority to start cases against corporations,

\- many European countries have a variety of consumer complaint boards that handle small claims efficiently and at low cost.

Few who know consumer matters in both the US and the EU would trade the European system for the American.

<comment><USER3> The EU system seems to be very anti-consumer. Or is that what your summary statement is intended to elicit? (tough to tell, as it could mean either/or is the better system)

<comment><USER4> No, it's anti lawyer. Consumers are doing fine. Consumer watchdogs have actual teeth and when companies are found to have misbehaved the penalties can be quite severe.

The difference is that consumers don't usually get rich from suing companies, we don't have a 'legal lottery' for every little thing that spoils your day and that you feel grieved about. That higher barrier keeps the courts free for stuff that is important and at the same time makes sure that we don't end up with a climate where everybody is suing everybody else all the time.

<comment><USER5> > Consumers are doing fine.

By what measure?

<comment><USER4> Consumer satisfaction indices are published with some regularity, the United States is usually somewhere between the 20th and the 30th position of such rankings.

Now obviously the United States is huge and there is huge diversity between the various demographics and localities but it is beyond dispute that consumers in Europe are doing fine (and that consumers in the United States are not doing much worse on average).

It would be strange to find anything different, taking into account that we're talking about the wealthiest segment of the world.

<comment><USER6> Does anyone know of a resource that aggregates the EU stats to compare US be the EU?

<comment><USER7> Eurostat ? ("Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union situated in Luxembourg. Its mission is to provide high quality statistics for Europe").

They have stats for anything and everything, most renewed annually, in all 3 working language, in complete free access, and provide aggregate for EU17 and EU28.

Here is a link to their "browse stats by theme" page: [http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/browse-statistics-by- theme](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/browse-statistics-by-theme)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Class actions can be effective where the class members are relatively large, sophisticated entities. _E.g._ the data-breach class action brought by banks that is mentioned in the article. But in the consumer-protection space, we should consider alternatives. Where the class members are individual consumers, litigation ends up being lawyer-driven. Cases settle for pennies on the dollar of potential damages, and end up serving neither to compensate consumers nor really to deter illegal conduct.

Notably, in the EU, the tendency is to have more "ask for permission before doing something" regulation, and less "ask for forgiveness after doing something wrong" litigation. _E.g._ unlike in the U.S., there are laws setting forth detailed safety requirements for consumer products, and agencies responsible for enforcing those requirements. I suspect that approach yields the desired level of product safety at lower cost than the American approach. Similar approaches could, of course, be applied to consumer financial products.

<comment><USER9> >Where the class members are individual consumers, litigation ends up being lawyer-driven. Cases settle for pennies on the dollar of potential damages, and end up serving neither to compensate consumers nor really to deter illegal conduct.

You're completely misunderstanding the purpose of class actions, and are using an oft-repeated error. The article itself explains the value of class actions.

Class actions are an ideal instrument for redress of harm where the harm to any individual is small, but the harm is widespread, meaning that a company is cheating or hurting many people but it's not worth any one individual's effort or expense to sue them.

This is the source of the fallacy you commit: the idea that this involves large compensation for consumers. Consumers ARE compensated in class actions, it's just that their individual harm is small so their individual payout is small.

So if, say, Comcast has been secretly overcharging customers $10/month, it's not a big enough problem for any one of them to sue. But as a class of millions of Comcast consumers, it may be worth it, and can have a real punch at that level.

This is the other part of your error: of course class actions are "lawyer- driven" because, again, the harm to any individual is small. It's the lawyers and firms pursuing the class action that are doing the work and organizing the action, often on contingency. Related to your first mistake, you and many others see the lawyers getting a big payment as "stealing" from the class when they are being compensated for the work they did and winning restitution for harms that no individual consumer would pursue, and the class members STILL get fairly compensated for the small harm done to them.

Finally, and perhaps the largest part of your error, this does and, in the US, is really the only way to, deter illegal conduct because, again, this illegal conduct is premised on the idea that it's too small for any person to care or find it worthwhile to fight. By organizing a class action you enable consumers to hit back and stop this kind of behavior, and put companies on notice that they can't try these underhanded tactics without risk.

I agree that a regulation model would be preferable to this kind of litigation, but until we have regulation we must use the litigation tools we have available.

Be very wary of screeds against class actions, they're almost certainly corporate propaganda.

<comment><USER10> "Class actions are an ideal instrument for redress of harm where the harm to any individual is small, but the harm is widespread, meaning that a company is cheating or hurting many people but it's not worth any one individual's effort or expense to sue them."

Actually, you are misunderstanding the purpose of class actions. You may see it as s some ideal, but it's not why they were created. They were created to simplify similar cases into one case for the purpose of not having two trials when you could have one.. That's it. It was literally for the efficient administration of justice. Not to do what you suggest the purpose is. Take a gander at the history of the federal rules of civil procedure, this is very widely documented and known.

This is one reason the supreme court was able to say "no more". They are just a collection of court rules.

I'd also argue they are not the ideal instrument, as they rarely actually achieve any real gains for the individuals.

<comment><USER11> >I'd also argue they are not the ideal instrument, as they rarely actually achieve any real gains for the individuals.

I can't say whether or not the process is ideal, but I can say that the benefit to individuals is irrelevant. The COLLECTIVE - the whole society - benefits in a big way when the behavior of a large corporation doing very small harm to thousands or millions of individuals is punished and deterred. The bar for success can't always be directed at individuals; there are very positive societal level benefits that are small to individuals but huge to the whole ecosystem.

<comment><USER10> "but I can say that the benefit to individuals is irrelevant. "

Again, never the original purpose, and while a good goal, class actions are surely ineffective at this.

" The COLLECTIVE - the whole society - benefits in a big way when the behavior of a large corporation doing very small harm to thousands or millions of individuals is punished and deterred."

Also as mentioned, I think this is very true, but class actions have pretty much not had that effect at all. There are very few areas where class actions have been effective at accomplishing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I never understood why binding arbitration was legal for non-negotiated contracts.

Also, by reading this you agree all disputes between us will go through an arbitration firm of my choosing.

<comment><USER13> The courts actually prefer it as a lower cost alternative.

<comment><USER14> It's not up to the courts. Congress passed a law, the Federal Arbitration Act, which explicitly instructs the courts to treat arbitration provisions at least as favorably as any other contract provision. In the absence of a conflicting Constitutional provision, the courts have no choice but to enforce the statute Congress passed.

<comment><USER15> Correction: American Arbitration Act (aka AAA).

<comment><USER16> Wikipedia disagrees: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act)

<comment><USER15> Yikes! I stand corrected. Thank you. I was confusing it with the American Arbitration Association.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just look at how the EU consumer protection directives are working over here. You're simply not allowed to waive your guaranteed rights as a customer in some sort of EULA or TOS. And if you are forced to, the whole contract is void in it's entirety and you're free to walk away from it.

<comment><USER18> Although bear in mind that class-action law suits, which are the focus of this article, are typically not a right you have in the EU in the first place ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_action#Class_actions_out...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_action#Class_actions_outside_the_United_States)).

<comment><USER17> One caveat you typically have with them, is that you forfeit your right to file a lawsuit for individual damages.

So I see hardly any advantage for the individual customer who got some individual issue of magnitude and is forced to choose between this or arbitration outside of the juidical system.

<comment><USER19> IANAL, but I don't think it's possible to forfeit your right to sue. Maybe under some conditions, but never in the generic way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "only a lunatic or a fanatic sues for $30."

A bit off topic here but this is IMHO a great challenge for AI: making a lawyer affordable for the masses when they are bullied by banks, airlines, etc.

If it costs you $5 , why not sue for $30 ?

<comment><USER21> Because the risk of paying litigation expense is in the four, five or six figures.

Chasing a return with a potential risk of loss several orders of magnitude higher is insane.

<comment><USER22> I think the point is that the potential risk starting so high is keeping people from seeking proper justice.

<comment><USER21> Yes, that is my point

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I sued a company where I worked. They were not paying my final dues after I left the company. It took me 1 year and lots of visits to court just to get my final dues. Finally after a year of all such waste of time, they came to me and asked for a settlement to which I agree and I got part of my money.

In India, even if you know you will win the case, it is not worth it. It will take your mental peace. Although I highly recommend to sue companies in other countries, In India we should think twice before suing anyone.

<comment><USER24> If they also had to hire consuel and appear in court, the burden was equally large on them. If everyone sued, the burden would cause change. Acceping things as they are is how you keep things bad.

<comment><USER25> Except that in the plaintiff's case, he is devoting 100% of his time while court is in session, while the company is devoting a fraction of their resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is no valid reason why a company should require someone to sign away their rights, and it absolutely should not be allowed. Otherwise individuals might as well not have those rights at all.

</comment><comment><USER22> Capture of the machine of the justice system by the wealthy is one of the most impactful and persistent market distortions in human history.

If people cannot bring the power of government to enforce appropriate costs against players with more market power government of the People, by the People, and for the People has failed.

<comment><USER27> It isn't just a capture of the justice machine by the wealthy, though I agree this is the case too. It is also an issue with the government, courts, and the laws themselves. How is a citizen supposed to petition the government over injustices and grievances, and be dealt with fairly according to the law, when the government itself sets the financial barriers to entry so high? How can a poor person get justice when the courts are set up to favor lawyers over citizens? You can represent yourself in court, of course, but any mistakes you make in not filing the right form here or declaring the right motion there will most likely result in a huge injustice being done by the courts, simply because you, as an average citizen, don't know how to navigate all the legal minutia.

Have the wealthy really captured the courts, or have the government, judges, and lawyers set up a situation in which only the rich get justice?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "First, opponents claim that plaintiffs are better served by acting individually than by joining a group lawsuit."

Then why should it matter if plaintiffs want to act collectively (ie, put themselves at a disadvantage according to the quote above)--wouldn't that benefit the opponents?

</comment><comment><USER29> FACT: products liability law reduced accidental deaths in the workplace. (source: [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm))

There is no reason similar laws wouldn't work for consumers privacy. Tort law needs to be applied aggressively to data privacy.

<comment><USER30> > FACT: products liability law reduced accidental deaths in the workplace. > (source: > [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm)) > There is no reason similar laws wouldn't work for consumers privacy. Tort > law needs to be applied aggressively to data privacy.

How exactly does that source support the FACT? The words "liable" and "liability" appear nowhere in it. They credit the reduction in workplace fatalities to a number of factors, including technology, expanded enforcement powers of federal inspectors, mandatory standards, and the creation of OSHA and NIOSH. They make no mention of product liability or tort laws.

<comment><USER29> Relax sparky. The chart demonstrates the decline only. Don't go looking to government to praise the private sector or free market solutions when their budget depends entirely on the opposite being true.

At 40,000 inspections/yr it wasn't much OSHA with their tiny, often negotiated fines that caused the decline. ANSI is pretty much the gold standard for safety, not OSHA regs, so their non-mandatory standards don't get a lot of credit. It wasn't a magical fairy tapping a gossamer wand atop a dangerous machine.

It was thousands of plaintiffs attorneys suing the shit out of manufacturers who designed and sold products that could be made more safely. It was the tort laws that let them to sue. It was the insurance companies who extracted hefty sums to write products liability policies on manufactured machinery. And it was the innovators who used sensors, locking mechanisms, new training methods and private inspection procedures that have made the US a workplace safety leader.

The government legislated accountability. The free market made it happen. It can be the same with data privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a great idea. Contracts of adhesion that dominate our lives should not automatically and totally be stacked in favor of companies.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't disagree with the sentiment of the article given the examples provided, i.e. Wells Fargo. That said, given the climate for frivolous lawsuits brought by "shakedown" attorneys, it opens the flood gates for something far worse.

Maybe a better compromise is to allow for binding arbitration UNLESS the company is found guilty of fraud or other illegal activity, such as Wells Fargo.

Alternatively, perhaps tort reform to prevent frivolous lawsuits would remove the need for arbitration.

<comment><USER32> I found this Adam Ruins Everything episode on the McDonald's Coffee Lawsuit & Tort reform really interesting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9DXSCpcz9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9DXSCpcz9E) if you'd like to jump to where they talk about frivolous lawsuits it starts here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9DXSCpcz9E#t=03m15s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9DXSCpcz9E#t=03m15s)

Some notes:

\- Tort reform is largely a concept pushed by big business trying to avoid getting sued when they do wrong.

\- The number of frivolous lawsuits in the US is actually pretty low.

\- The lady burned by the McDonalds coffee was really hurt, and was only one of many many people burned by McDonalds coffee, who refused to serve it less hot.

<comment><USER33> > The lady burned by the McDonalds coffee was really hurt, and was only one of > many many people burned by McDonalds coffee, who refused to serve it less > hot.

What the documentary left out, was that it happened over a 10 year period where 700 out of 171 BILLION customers got burned from mcdonald's coffee. This is statistically nothing.

> Tort reform is largely a concept pushed by big business trying to avoid > getting sued when they do wrong.

While I do not know who created the youtube video you posted, the "Hot Coffee" documentary that is frequently mentioned about the liebeck case is actually created by a special interest group, "Association of Trial Lawyers of America". If you think this movie doesn't have an agenda as well, I have a bridge to sell you. A video that does a better job of clearing up the misconceptions of the case is here: [http://www.hotcoffeetruth.com/](http://www.hotcoffeetruth.com/) .

> The number of frivolous lawsuits in the US is actually pretty low.

I have a hard time believing this. Frivilous lawsuits are easy to do in america and my friends (annoyingly) do them all the time. In fact, they brag about the ease of doing it. My personal estimate is around 70% of "I was injured" lawsuits from my friends were just made up to cash out.

Finally, "hot coffee" lawsuits happen all the time in america at temperatues as hot or hotter than what was given in liebeck case. And the cases almost always get thrown out by judges and juries because they are regarded as "frivilous". Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants#Similar_lawsuits)

The liebeck case was the exception, not the rule.

<comment><USER34> >What the documentary left out, was that it happened over a 10 year period where 700 out of 171 BILLION customers got burned from mcdonald's coffee. This is statistically nothing.

That is the problematic thinking right there. You are sacrificing 700 people to be burned so badly by coffee they require skin grafting based on it being _statistically insignificant_.

While no doubt many cases settled, many didn't and in those cases McDonalds was ordered to turn the temp down so spilled coffee would at least not result in scalding that require skin grafting. It is not small thing or statistically insignificant that McDonalds ignored many court orders, but why did they ignore the court order? Because the same cost benefit analysis you presented, they'd happily continue their practicies of selling 171B coffees and paying out 700 claims, than change the coffee temp and _potentially_ lose any coffee market share.

As I mention above this well known case is unique because it awarded punitive damages, equaling 1 day of coffee sales, solely because the company repeatedly ignored court orders (i.e. Told the court to go fuck itself), further what is never mentioned consistent with the anti-litigation PR is that the judgement was appealed and ultimately lowered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish there was a way to preemptive lawsuit a industry, before it even undertakes a operation. Basically, a group of people bets with lawsuits on the damages done to society by a industrial operation, forcing anyone to endeavor such operations to build a huge deposit of settlement and legalfees to cover the threat - on for example cutting down "rainforrest". As state actors have proven lousy wardens on these goods of society, maybe the interest of private stakeholders might put such a bounty on the head of damaging activity's, that these cease or be replaced with less "dangerous" replacement endeavors, previously not viable in a market economy that rewards distributed short term damages to everyone.

<comment><USER36> That is an interesting idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There's this one cool site to query outcomes of arbitration. No bueno.

[http://levelplayingfield.io/](http://levelplayingfield.io/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to understand what the end hope is. Very few class action lawsuits have resulted in any sort of permanent change. Also note the whole reason for class action lawsuits was efficient justice, and class action lawsuits are a fairly recent creation, so that's not entirely surprising. However the lawsuits that tend to change things tend to be "government vs".

Maybe it gives consumers a good feeling to be able to sue everyone, but is it actually helping anything?

Even in the past, people were not able to sue the telecoms or banks into having good customer service, or into not doing illegal things. Rarely, if ever, have they recouped the profits these companies made doing whatever. Instead, all the companies just treat it as "cost of business". I'm not sure it's really been a vehicle for effective change anymore.

Certainly arbitration won't be either, but maybe groups of super annoyed people may have better luck forcing the government into action than people placated by class actions where the government can wash its hands say "well, they already took care of it!"

<comment><USER38> Perhaps this is a situation where we shouldn't let the perfect get in the way of the good. Class actions return money to wronged parties. That's good so we should remove the arbitration cruft that is preventing that.

<comment><USER10> I guess i don't think the situation was good!

They didn't return anywhere near a good amount of money to wronged parties. Lawsuits were being settled for not even pennies on the dollar. (arbitration also isn't cruft, but it's definitely getting an undeserved bad rap)

Actually, the situation i long for is before the creation of the LLC, where shareholders were responsible for paying for the corporations lawsuits. LLCs are fairly recent invention, and also one that hurt consumers a lot.

IMHO, No better way to get wells fargo to stop doing illegal things than have the people who own X% be forced to pay for it. That'll change a board right quick.

<comment><USER39> Who do you think ends up paying, if not the owners of the company? As long as the company isn't bankrupt, incorporation doesn't change anything.

Full liability of owners isn't feasible in the current system, because it would expose every single investor to unlimited liability.

<comment><USER10> "Who do you think ends up paying, if not the owners of the company?"

Errr, the company is liable as a separate entity from the owners. That's the whole point. Ignoring insurance, etc, the owners/shareholders will not be liable. The entity will be, completely and legally separate from the people you are talking about.

If I own a company, and my bank account has a billion dollars in it, and the company has 1 million, and they end up fined for 2 million, even as the owner, i don't pay.

"As long as the company isn't bankrupt, incorporation doesn't change anything."

Of course it does. Your argument is a very indirect one, since the owners/shareholders quite literally don't pay. Thus, any payment by shareholders comes in lost money in the market or something, which is both a very indirect thing, and rarely matches the actual cost.

"Full liability of owners isn't feasible in the current system, because it would expose every single investor to unlimited liability."

The first part seems very disconnected from the second. The fact that every investor has unlimited liability does not make it infeasible. Maybe unwanted by the investor, but not infeasible. Right now, the risk of them going bankrupt/etc has been foisted on everyone else who they may injure. I get why the investors don't want that risk. That's their problem.

I'd be fine with "LLC up to some amount of revenue/profit, you must convert to liable corp afterwards".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Probably not the perfect topic for the following question, but close enough for me to ask;

What is the deal with class action lawsuits WRT the monies lawyers get vs the plaintiffs.

I was a victim of fraudulent banking practices in 2008/2009 which resulted in the illegal foreclosure of my home in San Jose. I "won" my class action lawsuit and was "awarded"$1,100 for my victory on having a $489,000 house stolen from me by the bank. (Never missed a payment, never late, had credit score of 780 - this experience ruined me)

So I "won" that legal battle - but was unable to have my credit score fixed through the win...

So the question is: class-action lawsuit victories look to me to be a complete sham, so why would we value them as anything other than a "fuck you for not having enough money" enterprise - and where do the lawyers get off on their "right" to profit off such actions at the expense of others?

</comment><comment><USER41> I agree, these arbitration clauses are just another way corporations get away with screwing over consumers.

</comment><comment><USER42> This isn't already possible? That's not right that companies can hack the law like this. Consumers should be able to sue.

<comment><USER43> Citizens United was the end of democracy in Americal, and this is yet another piece of the fallout.

<comment><USER8> The Federal Arbitration Act, codifying Congressional preference for arbitration instead of court proceedings, was enacted in 1925.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The oddest takeaway from this for me is that these arbitration clauses are banned for contracts for members of the military.

</comment><comment><USER45> Alternative viewpoint:

[https://www.consumerfinancemonitor.com/2017/08/22/director-c...](https://www.consumerfinancemonitor.com/2017/08/22/director- cordrays-op-ed-disregards-many-inconvenient-facts/)

</comment><comment><USER46> _In 2010, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which I direct, was authorized to study mandatory arbitration and write rules consistent with the study. After five years of work..._

Talk about a schedule overrun. That project should have been finished in 2011.

<comment><USER47> I work in an industry tied closely to the actions of the CFPB, and they've had a lot on their plate ever since they were founded. They continuously get attacked by industry groups (formally through lawsuits and informally through what is more or less industry propaganda). I wouldn't be shocked if they spent the majority of their time and resources just defending their right to exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Call me cynical, but it seems most class action lawsuits end up paying $100m to a lawyer group and $5 to each individual :/

</comment><comment><USER49> I was under the impression that class-action lawsuits were already a possibility for consumers.

<comment><USER50> Contracts in the US are allowed to include clauses forbidding class-action suits and mandating binding arbitration in their place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> A slightly related issue that I find somewhat unsettling is how easily big companies that are being sued by state or federal governments are able to settle in out of court proceedings.

From my understanding, the argument for allowing settlements is to help one or both parties somehow save face, time, or money. However, what everyone (including people who are not affiliated with either party) loses out on is the possibility to establish a precedent. Some of the cases that come to mind are the HSBC case where some people who were following the court proceedings started to sense and publicly state the real possibility of actual criminal wrongdoing ([https://www.wsj.com/articles/hsbc-agrees-470m-settlement- ove...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/hsbc-agrees-470m-settlement-over-alleged- u-s-mortgage-abuses-1454689803)). Compare that to a guilty plea by BNP Paribas here ([https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jun/30/bnp- paribas...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jun/30/bnp-paribas- pleads-guilty-criminal-charges-sanctions) and [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bnp-paribas-sentenced- conspir...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bnp-paribas-sentenced-conspiring- violate-international-emergency-economic-powers-act-and)).

In comparison, see what happens to an individual ([https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/19/soc-gen-rogue-trader- kerviel...](https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/19/soc-gen-rogue-trader-kerviel- heading-for-jail.html)), and how people try to avoid it ([https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-09/ex- socgen...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-09/ex-socgen- banker-charged-in-insider-case-tied-to-airgas-takeover)).

TL;DR: Big companies get to settle all to easily in cases brought forward by government attorneys without admitting guilt or wrongdoing, which is in contrast individuals (even wealthy ones) who often basically become the targets of what effectively becomes (sometimes faux) moral crusade. Companies end up:

1\. Doing something that breaks the law, but in a sufficiently obfuscated manner. 2\. Getting caught by government usually via the observation and study by keen citizens and/or outright whistleblowers. 3\. Involving their legal team to both prepare for fighting the case, and to give PR guidance and statements. Marketing and salespeople downplay the concerns from both consumers and customers. 4\. When the case becomes sufficiently uncomfortable, settle it with government for some fraction of the total estimated damages and not admit to wrongdoing. 5\. Write off the settlement amount in the most tax- friendly manner possible via in-house or third-party accountants. 6\. Get praise internally and externally for being _scrappy_ and _disrupting_ the _establishment /government/noun-used-as-a-pejorative_ (yes, you too dear HN contributor/lurker). 7\. Rinse and repeat 1-6.

I think a few of the things that Uber and AirBnB have had to settle essentially map to the steps I outlined above.

Note: a. The sources above that I cite might not be the best ones to support my claim, but the general issue and the unwillingness to resolve it properly remain. b. I realize that step 6 is mean/snarky/typecasting. My aim was to remind the reader that audible/silent praise/rebuke do have power, and that _doing nothing does register as a signal in some situations_.

</comment><comment><USER52> Don't do business with companies that have such contracts? If there is no choice in a given sector then the issue is a monopoly not the contracts.

<comment><USER26> That's not usually a choice, and it's not due to monopoly. Just about every company out there is adding these clauses to their contracts. And consumers have no power to combat them.

<comment><USER53> You have the power not to enter into the agreement. No one is forcing you to download a song from iTunes or open an account at Wells Fargo. If you don't like the terms, don't enter into the agreement.

<comment> david-cako Your suggestion is effectively a suggestion that anyone who wants to not implicitly agree to such terms simply doesn't participate in the developed world.

This makes zero sense. It's on par with saying "dude just turn off javascript".

Is the answer to political corruption buying a boat and taking refuge in the pacific ocean, or is actually correcting the problem?

<comment><USER52> >This makes zero sense. It's on par with saying "dude just turn off javascript".

That's what you actually should do, I use NoScript and it's perfectly fine. Stop bitching and demanding people force others into the things YOU want.

<comment> david-cako What things do you think I want? Do you think I roll out of bed looking forward to using obfuscated javascript on every site I visit?

at least 5-10% of websites shit the bed on me with uBlock turned on. can't imagine what noscript is like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Letting consumers continue to sue is not the answer. It only incentivizes more litigiousness, which is part of the things that are ruining American society.

What we need instead is for the government to pursue these crimes on our behalf. The fines should be draconian with no options for them to dilute it the way the SEC does. And the fines should go towards some fund that specializes in charities instead of going to government coffers so that we don't incentive behavior like civil forfeiture.

<comment><USER55> So letting people who were legitimately wronged receive justice and fair compensation in court for that wrong is "litigiousness" and therefore bad?

First, I think you misunderstood what litigiousness means.

Second, merely labeling something as litigious doesn't make it a bad thing.

Litigiousness refers to frivolous lawsuits not legitimate ones. However large corporations have done a campaign of trying to label everything litigious to try and save money.

Personally, I like the fact that courts exist to let people redress wrongs. If regulation was so effective at stopping bad behavior, how did banks, one of the most regulated industries in the world, manage to open up phony bank accounts for customers with no regulatory involvement? In fact how did they cause the financial crash with no regulatory intervention?

Regulation is a bad joke and I'm convinced it's just a PR stunt by the government to make it look like it's doing something.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The Unofficial Patreon Button - <AUTHOR> https://ptrn.me

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I built over the last two evenings it because I have a Patreon project of my own, and wanted something like the FB/Twitter/Flattr/Github buttons on the website. Behind the scenes it uses JS and YQL, and has no server-side components. It's rather simple, really. I also set up a hosted version (HTTP/HTTPS). :)

If you have questions, suggestions, bug reports or anything, please let me know!</comment>


NatI: Multi-language voice control system for Ubuntu written in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rcorcs/NatI

<comment><USER2> I've done something similar with Sphinx, which worked quite well too.

However, I feel the real challenge to productify such a technology would be to make this system recognise utterances spoken casually, over loud music, over friends talking in the background.

Also, how would the speech to text recognise the user's commands over some sound playing from its own speaker. Suppose I set up a text-to-speech system to read a book to me. I want to be able to make it repeat a paragraph (because my attention had drifted away). However, the input channel of the microphone would contain not only me shouting "stop", but also the output of the text-to- speech system.

We humans have a way of factoring out our own voice when we are listening to someone else. Is there a way to make machines do that?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is doable with some analysis of the sound signal. Honda's ASIMO does that, somehow. But I think it would be a current scientific research topic.

<comment><USER2> Any links on relevant material? I'm okay for delving into current research topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are very interesting papers from Google: [http://research.google.com/pubs/SpeechProcessing.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/SpeechProcessing.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One problem I have with things like this is non-customizable hot words. For example, Google Now has this feature where it would always listen for "Ok Google" as long as your device is plugged in, which is a great feature. The problem is I have multiple devices, and saying "Ok Google" would wake all of them up, which is never what I wanted.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like you need to be give each device a name. Jarvis!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been working with Julius a lot, another open-source speech recognition engine.

How easy did you find it to work with NLTK?

Did you have a lot of NL experience before this project? Do you think something like NLTK would be easy to pick up?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've studied NLTK before from the book Natural Language Processing with Python. I even use NLTK within NatI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it is written in Python, is this really only relevant to Ubuntu ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it can be used in other operating systems with little (if any) change, as far as you have all the python libraries requested. But, I've only tested it with Ubuntu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be nice if we all can contribute a little bit you improve the repository :) I've already started giving a little bit of my time to it

</comment><comment><USER8> Hm, something like this would be nice in conjunction with my XBMC htpc.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be great! I have some future plans for using it with some robots ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5nTHwl0K_w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5nTHwl0K_w)), with smart-house technology, like "turn on/off the lights".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know about you all; but I don't know if I trust a project that check .pyc files into version control.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, these files are not needed, you can delete them and just execute the python files.

<comment><USER9> It shows a lack of care and craftsmanship.

If someone can't be arsed to borrow a .gitignore ( and github will give you a fairly complete one for python ) what other corners will they cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What asr engine are you using?

<comment><USER2> Google.

[https://github.com/rcorcs/NatI/blob/master/gapi.py#L26](https://github.com/rcorcs/NatI/blob/master/gapi.py#L26)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have just updated to use Google Speech API v2.</comment></comment></comment>


I watched my patients die of poverty for 40 years. It's time for single-payer - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/12/i-watched-my-patients-die-of-poverty-for-40-years-its-time-for-single-payer/?utm_term=.570a3814bb63 <comment><USER2> This is a false dichotomy. There are other options between 'the way things are' and govt single payer for helping the poor get better access to healthcare.</comment>


Ask HN: How did you learn MetaSploit? - <AUTHOR> I've spent like 20 hours banging my head against the wall over the last few weekends.
I started with www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed. It "teaches" by example instead of concepts, though. I read a good portion of it for what it is worth but it's not worth much.
Then I tried "Mastering MetaSploit" but they don't include a target machine disk image so you can't follow along. Of course you don't realize that until you're some way through the book and have stretched metasploitable to its breaking point.
People joke about how MetaSploit is so easy to use that it's for script kiddies but I'm putting serious effort into learning it and getting nowhere. <comment><USER2> Vulnhub has hundreds of virtual machine images you can download and practice with, such as metasploitable. Hack the box is great. If you want to read a blog post describing how to get admin or root on a box, google boxname walkthrough with vulnhub or hack the box in the search as well. Ippsecs's 90+ youtube videos are excellent. Check out metasploit minute videos. I also heard pentestlabs is good. Good luck!</comment>


Hey AP How About Running A Real News Web Site? - <AUTHOR> http://daggle.com/080624-194903.html

<comment><USER2> "That's the home page of your web site. Where's the news? Where are the articles? Where's the FRONT PAGE!!! You know, like a newspaper front page that shows me the top articles of the day. Surely you've heard of front pages of this style."

Uh... that's not their business model and doing what the author suggests would certainly upset their content distribution partners. That would put them in competition with the companies that pay them very well for their stories and as such would be a short-sighted approach. And, despite not showing news on their home page, I'm guessing AP is doing a whole lot better financially than the newspapers that do what you're suggesting.

More upsetting is their attempt (successful I think?) to own the news that they break for a certain period of time.</comment>


Why tokenize vouchers and gift cards on Stellar? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/rehive-blog/why-tokenize-vouchers-and-gift-cards-on-stellar-9b407d873fe9 <comment><AUTHOR> Surprisingly, in between all the hype it seems like the opportunity to tokenize vouchers for e-commerce and retail has been overlooked.

What if you could integrate a simple SDK that supports a global value transfer standard, avoid the requirement of a large operating float and benefit from a fluid marketplace to get the best rates to sell any voucher in the world?

It looks like there is a massive win-win for all stakeholders if vouchers are tokenized. This article unpacks the proposed model for suppliers, retailers, brokers, traders, distributor and consumers.</comment>


There's never been a better time to be a 14-year-old developer - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/09/theres-never-been-a-better-time-to-be-a-14-year-old-developer/

<comment><USER2> The mid-late 80's were also a good time to be a 14-year-old developer.

Computers were $200, and booted straight into a development environment, and came with sufficient printed documentation to actually learn that language.

At that time, the budget for low budget commercial games was 1-3 man-months of effort, very much within the reach of amateurs.

There also existed a good market for amateur productions -- things like the "disk of the month" clubs.

I was able to produce a game in a weekend, and sell it for one to two hundred dollars. If you factor in inflation, that's a pretty good wage for someone who's just learning and playing around.

The market for cheap, easy to make games dried up in the 90s. Even successful shareware games required a level of polish, effort and knowledge out of reach of most 14 year olds.

I'm really happy to see that 14 year olds can once again have experiences similar to mine. I hope it lasts, but it does appear that mobile development is shifting to the more standard "winner takes all" marketplace.

<comment><USER3> Unless you had a Mac, in which case $200 was the price of simply _buying the API reference_ (Inside Macintosh), without which your pirated copy of Think C was inscrutable.

I did do some cool stuff in HyperTalk though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reason it's great to be a young developer is all the press it garners. Even a mediocre game will earn a top spot on HN if it's programmed by a young person.

<comment><USER5> A lot of people give unwarranted applause to young developers. So it's pretty easy for it to go their heads. I definitely agree that doing something at a younger age doesn't really mean that it's "better".

<comment><USER6> Some encouragement is a whole lot better than nothing though. For every one of these young app store success stories there's probably 10 who are just as technically gifted, but just enjoy programming for programmings sake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Being a good developer is largely about practice. Who has more time to practice than a 14 year old armed with an entire summer vacation of free time and no worries about having to pay bills? I'm more impressed when a 35 year old with a family is able to learn to be a developer.

<comment><USER3> To say nothing of brain plasticity.

However actually shipping when you're that young is hard. It was not til I was 19 or 20 that I finally felt like I could write "real" software. The pieces just never fell into place before that despite dabbling for a decade or more as a child. Granted the web as it exists today makes it infinitely easier to learn today than it was when I was a kid, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse. Even with Google in all its glory I can't say unequivocally that I would be shipping code if I were 14 today.

<comment><USER8> > Granted the web as it exists today makes it infinitely easier to learn today > than it was when I was a kid, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse.

You should. It's not just Google: Communities like HN, stackoverflow and reddit provide motivation and help when you need it. Now, with MOOCs being the latest trend in education, anyone can take university-level courses from world-renown on many topics for free.

> Even with Google in all its glory I can't say unequivocally that I would be > shipping code if I were 14 today.

Are you sure? Why do you think age actually plays a role in a person's ability to ship code?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"[14 yr old Rubin] was recently hired to develop a new website for the American Journal of Psychiatry (in part because it's edited by his uncle)."_

That doesn't sound like a good idea...

<comment><USER10> No it's a fantastic idea, he's a child prodigy after all. Eagerness and being related to the editor are entirely more important than professional quality anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone still learning a lot about development (I would really like to meet someone who isn't...), I can't help but be somewhat jealous of the upstart devs in the 80s and 90s who just had terminals, text editors, make and ANSI C. The raw knowledge base required to establish a base for oneself is tremendous now. And the paradigms of programming have only become more and more complex, since everything needs networking, multicore, heterogeneous computing, and security is harder than ever.

<comment><USER12> However I do find bootstrapping yourself a web app is way easier today than say, 10 years ago. The tools are efficient and a pleasure to work with. Frameworks increasingly abstract out many pains so you can focus on your problem (e.g. Meteor). You might have to spend a few days getting a hang of all the different options before committing to one of them, but once you're set, you can get up and running really quickly.

<comment><USER11> But at the same time understanding the web itself has become much harder. CSS3 / html5 / ECMAscript 5.1 / JS 1.85 (I looked them up, I can't remember any real fundamental JS changes that have happened recently since they added let) are all much more complex standards. I mean, the number of tags in html5 was increased by, like, 50%?.

Sure, at least now the standards are much more stable than in the 90s (I can't imagine trying to keep up with the rapid and constant platform lock in gotchas between netscape and ie...) but _learning_ all that stuff takes a lot longer.

It is like how you can start a car easier today than you could in 1920. The car is much more complex, but the abstractions built on top of that have made it as easy as turning a key rather than having to rev the engine, crank it up, etc. But anyone trying to be an automechanic is _expected_ to know the fine grained details of the modern combustion engine and all the quirks auto manufacturers use to make them more efficient and performant, or else they don't come off as "professional".

I feel the same way with _any_ development role. It doesn't feel professional if I don't know the whole stack behind it. And the stack, like the car, has only gotten taller. Average Joe can pick up Drupal or jquery + bootstrap + rails and crank out a pretty neat web app, but the second their tools don't cover some use case and they are forced to look at things like the TCP stack, packet headers, http headers, etc, and they look lost, they also look bad at what they are doing.

<comment><USER12> So as I understand your point is that it's more difficult to get down to 'hacking level' today, thought it is surely easier to glue things together without deeper understanding. Whereas back in the 80s hacking level wasn't so far from day-to-day development. I agree, I hit these roadblocks every now and then and at each point I'm confronted with the deeper question of whether I want to devote time to really grasp what's behind the magic, or is it better to clutch at workarounds so I can turn up an app faster. I guess in the long term achieving hacker level has better payoff, but I seldom take the metaphorical leap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the statement "There's never been a better time to be a 14-year old developer" is always true – things keep getting better.

</comment><comment><USER14> On the flip side, there's never been a more terrible time to be a 54-year-old developer.

</comment><comment><USER15> is this still a big deal today? unlike a few years ago, computers are easily accessible today, information and lessons on the internet are waiting to be discovered... I simply don't think age matters at all in this field..

<comment><USER16> I would say that this facet of computers is becoming less accessible as time goes on. App stores, code signing, OS lock-downs and all sorts of "security" measures just make it harder for someone to pick up programming.

<comment><USER17> That's only true if you want to learn programming on a locked-down platform like an iPad or a smartphone. You can still write code for Windows or Linux that anyone can download from your web site or Github without jumping through any hoops. And despite all the prognostications about the death of the general-purpose computer being imminent, there are still infinitely many useful programs that you can develop for a desktop/laptop machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I disagree with the first paragraph; isn't it more difficult now than it was a couple of years ago to get a successful iOS app store hit? with the huge amount of competition and number of quality free game downloads now.

<comment><USER18> If you compare making an iOS app now to making a successful Symbian game a few years ago, it's night and day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hate to be a Debbie downer, but I have a hard time seeing the economics of this working out for the publisher although I'm sure it's a great experience for the kids. Most of these apps probably won't break even so they will need to have a mega hit to make it work, which seems unlikely given the competition of professionally made large budget (comparatively) games and extremely talented and dedicated indie developers.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a feeling a very high percentage of programmers on HN themselves started when they were 13-15 years old.

<comment><USER21> I too, started young. This is from my personal site:

 _I was born in the mid-sixties and got in touch with software programming at an early age. It became my hobby, along with the field of electronics. I was very keen to get to know exactly how things worked and what was happening, even up to the level of the silicon. In those days I spent more time reading datasheets and computer manuals than I did reading comics.

During my whole career in secondary school (VWO-B) I have been able to follow the development of the microcomputer. As far as that goes, I grew up in a very interesting era. It was the period in which the 'computing power' migrated from the centralized mainframes to various decentralized systems.

Due to my innate interest I became acquainted with all sorts of programming languages and fields of application for computers; I absorbed a lot of knowledge regarding the subjects that interested me the most. At the time, the topics were C, data communication, audiovisual applications, and relational databases, first on C/PM and later on MSDOS. Some years later, C++, Unix, and Windows were added. And after a while I also acquired knowledge of the Internet, the WWW, and programming languages such as Java, Java script, PHP, and Python.

When I was twenty years old I managed to get a job as a software developer, and since this line of work has never ceased to interest me I am currently still active as a developer._

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's never been easier to be a young developer either.</comment>


The Slow Death of Invoicing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sammadden/the-slow-death-of-invoicing-6e5843d46bed

<comment><USER2> Isn't invoicing also a formal way of extending credit (or IOUs) to other businesses. It makes perfect sense in the situation where there is high trust between parties. However it sucks for the person extending the terms because they're out of pocket until payment is made (if at all it is made)

<comment><AUTHOR> Accounts payables/receivables makes complete sense for larger companies -- they are established, there is trust built between the 2 parties, and it gives companies flexibility in managing their cash. But for micro businesses and professionals whose counterparties are new in 50% of cases, the big-business invoicing mentality actually creates more problems than it solves.</comment></comment>


The Programmer as Navigator (1973) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.colonese.it/00-Sw-Engineering_Articoli/The%20Programmer%20as%20Navigator,%20Charles%20Bachman,%201973.pdf <comment><USER2> Does anyone know of a book / publication containing all Turing Award lectures. Every one I've seen (so far) has been well worth reading, and I'd love to kick back with a whole set of them for more contemplation.

<comment><AUTHOR> _ACM Turing Award Lectures: The First Twenty Years 1966-1985_ [https://www.amazon.com/ACM-Turing-Award- Lectures-1966-1985/d...](https://www.amazon.com/ACM-Turing-Award- Lectures-1966-1985/dp/0201548852)

For subsequent years, see [http://amturing.acm.org/lectures.cfm](http://amturing.acm.org/lectures.cfm)

ACM A.M. Turing Award Lectures video playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn0nrSd4xjjYCkOxtYqoz...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn0nrSd4xjjYCkOxtYqozyDuwt-4sC2L6)

<comment><USER3> It looks like the lectures at ACM go all the way back to 1966 as well, thanks for the link!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Delaunay Triangulating Robert Delaunay's Eiffel Tower Paintings - <AUTHOR> https://modalduality.org/posts/delaunay-triangulating-delaunays-eiffel-tower/ <comment><USER2> If you're using Python anyway, you can use scipy's triangulation module to avoid having to compile triangle:

[https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy-0.14.0/reference/generated/...](https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy-0.14.0/reference/generated/scipy.spatial.Delaunay.html)

The triangulation can then be plotted fairly straightforwardly with matplotlib's triangulation routines: matplotlib.pyplot.triplot and matplotlib.pyplot.tripcolor ([https://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/tripcolor_dem...](https://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/tripcolor_demo.html)).

</comment><comment><USER3> I did some work [1] on constrained Delaunay triangulations similar to this where visually important, and constrained, edges were automatically determined by Laplace-like filters.

[1] [https://femtondev.wordpress.com/](https://femtondev.wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems to me that the Voronoi diagram [0], the counterpart of Delaunay triangulation, is probably more useful as a general approach to this idea.

The cellular nature is great for lots of applications.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram)

<comment><USER5> If your goal is to make it "cellular" you can get an even more cellular appearance by using the Delaunay triangle _centroids_ instead of the circumcenters like Voronoi diagrams use. Side by side comparisons [https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1721-voronoi- alternative/](https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1721-voronoi-alternative/) (scroll halfway down). The polygons end up looking rounder. I also made a little toy where you can drag an image onto the page to fill a cellular polygon diagram [https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1722-delaunay-map- import/](https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1722-delaunay-map-import/) (cartoon images work pretty well but fine detail is lost)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As suggested in the discussion points, thin lines/stripes get muddled up with wider adjacent surfaces. Is this a problem with the goal of the exercise ? Maybe it needs to be more clearly defined. I suppose the idea is that the method and the style fit together nicely, and as a result the paintings are representable quite efficiently with low resolution triangulations. It already mostly fits the bill, except for some exceptions to the main shapes represented. Does the author suggest further work should be devoted to improving the efficiency of the depiction? I guess the thin lines are quite important in keeping the paintings structured but I'm not sure what's to gain from that exercise if straying too far from the original triangulation — I think you'd lose the amusing coincidence of these concepts applying nicely together.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main idea is to explore the concept of skinny triangles being unaesthetic (and thus undesirable for triangulations). This is true for many tasks in computational geometry, but not so true in art. Bringing these two together shows jarring conflict where the Delaunay Triangulation and your brain's sense of aesthetics disagree.

It's not really supposed to be useful, just exploration in reduction of an already reduced art style: what is lost when we enforce that all shapes are triangles that tend to be more large-angle? For one, I think this destroys the perspective since one common trope is to make objects narrower as they are farther away.

Although the entire thing is mostly a joke based on their shared last names.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for your answer.

For what it's worth I think the result is incredibly adapted to the art style; I think you overestimate your conclusions and I don't think that is fair to extrapolate claims over the importance of skinny triangles in art in general.

This representation conveys most of what the originals had to offer, and has the added benefit of being a light content in a meaningful format. It's a good sign that your questions pulled me into the subject but I don't think there's much more to extrapolate from the experiment.

Now how about trying delaunay triangulation on animated content with the added constraint of optimising for fluidity? (Like the works on incorporating art styles to pictures and videos from last year that you may have noticed, and that were published in siggraph.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The other day I was looking at this coding challenge to automatically select points and create a Voronoi of an image: [https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/50299/draw- an-i...](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/50299/draw-an-image-as- a-voronoi-map)

Of course half the fun here is the coincidence of the last names :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting experiment! Per the talking points, I think a good color strategy would be to sample the lightest and darkest points from each region, and then use them as endpoints in a gradient fill.

</comment><comment><USER9> Super cool! Why does the Delaunay triangulation avoid skinny triangles?

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay_triangulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay_triangulation)

Delaunay triangulations maximize the minimum angle of all the angles of the triangles in the triangulation</comment></comment>


CA Labor Commission Has Just Killed Uber - <AUTHOR> http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2015/06/ca-labor-commission-has-just-killed-uber-though-it-may-take-years-to-bleed-out.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9731963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9731963)

<comment><USER3> Yes, thank you, I knew there had to be more than 3 comments on this topic :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note this is a different article than the TechCrunch one, this goes into the impact to Uber if they classify drivers as employees and you can see that it doesn't look good for Uber.

I wonder what the appeal process is here. I guess one of the good things about the current 'all money is private' investment strategy is that there isn't some hedgefund dumping millions of shares of Uber stock in uncovered short sales.

<comment><USER5> Couldn't have happened to nicer people. They will likely now double down on automated vehicles. Which I think are the future and I hope someone else succeeds in that as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "This would obviously make Uber drivers subject to minimum wage. How does one even figure that out? Now that there are local minimum wages (e.g. LA soon to be $15 an hour) how do you compute minimum wage for a trip that begins outside of LA but ends inside the city? Or vice versa?"

Probably you count time in LA at the LA rate, and when they leave the LA area by crossing the city limit, you calculate that accordingly.

A lot of these seem like non issues.

Like the time waiting to pick up a driver isn't the responsibility of the company anymore then your time checking a website to see if you got hours that week is the company's responsibility.

The California Supreme Court, in Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court, found that you don't have to force meal breaks, simply provide them, and my understanding is that that only applies if they work more then five hours, and if a work period is no more then 6 hours, meals can be waived by mutual consent.

Easy enough to do through the app.

The employees will just be part time employees working a variable shift. That solves like half of these "issues".

This didn't kill Uber. It still has economies of scale that put it ahead of normal taxi services, and the ability to intelligently adjust pricing.

<comment><USER7> usually you would have to pay people from the first stop of the day to the last stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems more like a lot of whining about how hard it is these days for a small business to hire really low-paid, uninsured workers than anything to do with Uber. I'm inclined to think Uber won't go out of business if it is treated just like taxicab companies. After all, the selling point of Uber isn't low cost - if you can find a taxi it will usually be cheaper - it's superior service.

Also, see the comment by Morgan D. Frank below the article.

</comment><comment><USER9> CA <> the addressable market in the world.

</comment><comment><USER10> I know that this site is going to be overwhelmingly pro-uber, but this guy is also a climate denier?

<comment><USER3> No, he's a climate skeptic, according to his website. I browsed that tab which has some extensive analysis.

<comment><USER11> "climate skeptic" is to "climate change denier" as "intelligent design" is to young earth creationism. It's the same position dressed up with language to seem less extremist.

<comment><USER10> As "Amen" is to "Hell Yeah". Well done.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: A tool to explore Git reflog interactively? - <AUTHOR> git reflog is nice to have in some situations, but exploring it from command line is rather painful.<p>Is there a UI tool that allows navigating the reflog in a better way? <comment><AUTHOR> I tried [https://git-fork.com/](https://git-fork.com/) and it adds commits from reflog (behind a Repository > Show lost commits toggle) in the commit graph, as if they were in some branches, which is probably good enough for my purposes.

It's a bit different way of presenting it than the textual git reflog command, so there's probably other ways to visualize it too.</comment>


Show HN: An e-book about integrating front end libraries - <AUTHOR> http://maxoffsky.com/frontend/

<comment><USER2> I'm not exactly the target audience (pretty handy with the front-end already) but I do know a lot of back-end developers who would find immense value in this book. A lot of the help I provide to more back-end focused devs is along the same lines: "here's what we need to do - here's why - here's a library/tool that makes this easier". I've actually been thinking lately about writing a similar book. Kudos to the author for putting this out there!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I would really appreciate if you could point them to this book. Also if you have any tips for me reaching the target audience - feel free to voice your opinion here or on twitter - @msurguy

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have no basis for saying this, but I feel like I wouldn't want to work on a app built by a developer who taught themselves frontend with this book.

The focus on "AJAX contact forms, AJAX file uploads, Avatar Cropping" in the blurb is odd. It sounds like you'll be getting a rundown on some handrolled jQuery stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. What's wrong with using jQuery? When you do the hiring are you looking for someone who takes up a couple months and rolls their own libraries or someone who can get the job done quickly by using existing open source projects? The AJAX file uploaders are super tricky, the one used in the book has a jQuery wrapper but can work without it, you'd only spend about 300% more time integrating it.

<comment><USER4> I think his point is more that it's typically easier and better to use preexisting contact form and file upload solutions, instead of writing your own (with jQuery or otherwise).

Personally I can see the benefit of banging out a form in jQuery instead of having to research and integrate another system, but something about the chapter summaries seem strange. It sounds like it's more about building custom front-end components than integrating different libraries (which is what I expected from the title).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the clarification. The chapter summaries on the maxoffsky.com/frontend page?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, in particular the lines:

* Creating AJAX contact form

* Building AJAX registration/login forms

Maybe it's just me, but that language kind of reminds me of the copy-paste era of Javascript development, where developers who don't understand JS semantics jump right into messing with login systems. Like 10 years ago it would have been "Building DHTML page counters". OFC I don't know if that impression reflects the actual material or not, though.

IMO if you're going to tell someone how to build AJAX contact forms, you would be better served writing a library to do it for them with a comprehensible API that makes it hard for people to fuck it up, or to start by explaining the basics of jQuery AJAX and selectors and event handlers and let people build the idea themselves from solid foundations. If someone really groks jQuery (or even vanilla JS), writing a contact form is a little tedious but not something that needs a tutorial or guide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. I'll clarify about the material and progression so that it's clear.

First you build the HTML of the form (chapter 1 covers that). Then you learn how to work with visual feedback (spinners and alerts, chapters 2 & 3). Then creating AJAX contact form integrates the stuff from chapters 1-3 to create AJAX contact form and connect it with the backend. Chapter 5 goes a step further - building login and registration forms using stuff from chapters 1-4 plus inline validation, integrating all previous components and things you built.

The book isn't for noobs. The prerequisites section ([https://leanpub.com/frontend/read#leanpub-auto-about-the- aut...](https://leanpub.com/frontend/read#leanpub-auto-about-the-author)) clearly explains that so the developers who don't understand JS semantics or don't know the basics of web applications should learn something else before they get back to this book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I check rapidly the free sample and I found the use of Laravel framework to be irrelevant. All examples could have been done with simple Html and others front-end libraries. It will confuse novice people. Should have just focused on front end.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! The purpose of the book is to feature complete integration of various libraries and frameworks with a backend. Laravel is chosen as an example framework so that the developer can have a complete solution instead of just some theory.

In the prerequisites to the book it clearly states that novice developers will have a hard time unless they have some backend experience.

<comment><USER6> I like the approach you have taken, GP is wrong.

Seeing the integration with a back end (any backend tbh) is better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The diagrams shows complete cycle and the code provided is open source and detailed step by step :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Ketchup Conundrum (2004) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-conundrum <comment><USER2> Heinz is absolute garbage, and consistently the worst major brand on the market.

I want _flavor_. It is ketchup, it needs to taste like such! The only two major brands that pass muster are Annie's and Primal Kitchen. Everything else is a thickened red sugar with a tiny smidgen of vinegar added in.

Generally, if Heinz makes a product, assume its botched garbage and isn't anything like what it claims on the bottle. Ketchup, mustard, steak sauce, relish? All fucking garbage.

You're only here on Earth for so long, quit eating depressing fake food.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/trudeau- wa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/trudeau-wades-into- us-canada-ketchup-war-with-tariffs-on- heinz/2018/06/29/5440c392-7b23-11e8-ac4e-421ef7165923_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.eb271678893d)

French's is making headway in Canada due to Heinz closing it's facilities and laying off 700 workers.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still prefer Heinz. I've had gourmet ketchup and still go back to Heinz. I've walked out of places for using that Sysco garbage ketchup.

<comment><USER5> The more sugar, the better people like it.

<comment><USER6> This seems to be the case for soooo many foods. And every time something gets sweeter, my family complains and we stop buying that item. We swore off a pizza chain years ago when we sat for lunch and the sauce was too sweet.

<comment><USER7> Ha, was it Pizza Hut?

<comment><USER2> If it comes from a chain, it ain't pizza.

Every town has some hole in the wall joint that makes pretty good shit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love me the Sriracha ketchup. I also like mixing my own with Franks or Franks wing sauce.

I don't ever eat normal ketchup

</comment><comment><USER9> 14 years later and we're still all eating Heinz. Sorry, Jim.</comment>


France to Block Facebook's Libra Cryptocurrency in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/12/france-block-development-facebook-libra-cryptocurrency <comment><USER2> They are right. Why would any country give up control of their currency to a single company that isn't even sitting on your soil?

</comment><comment><USER3> Given their track record, Facebook shouldn't be allowed to continue being a social network, let alone print money.</comment>


America's Biggest Economic Challenge May Be Demographic Decline - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/upshot/americas-biggest-economic-challenge-may-be-demographic-decline.html <comment><USER2> I don't see how this is an issue. The US follows the capitalistic model of considering its citizens as resources (workers), and thus uses immigration as a state policy to get the best human resource from the world. The american society has also been molded to accept that those who don't meet the requirements of employability or don't have some financial backup (thus still contributing) are dumped in age old homes, jail or on the streets (the homeless), and considered useless and treated as a burden on society, thus making space for more new immigrants.</comment>


Software developers describing their work in 1973 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxSdWhkMB_A&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> [https://youtu.be/AxSdWhkMB_A?t=3m55s](https://youtu.be/AxSdWhkMB_A?t=3m55s)

"Q: What are the cons of your profession? A: Almost every application that is being made ends up lagging in schedule, regrettably."

<comment><USER3> The more things change, the more they stay the same :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The video was posted by an awesome demoscene dude named viznut. Check out the rest of his channel.

Experimental music from very short C programs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtQdIYUtAHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtQdIYUtAHg)

Robotic Liberation (VIC-20 demo): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SdGkkp1aq8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SdGkkp1aq8)

</comment><comment><USER5> "Almost every application that is being made ends up lagging in schedule, regrettably"

I'm grateful, of course, for the technological progresses we've made since '73, but how come this is still an issue?

<comment><USER6> Because the high level business model remains the same. Seeking perpetually increasing short term profitability instead of long term sustainability. Carrot on a stick.

<comment><USER7> This is such a popular misconception amongst the nerd set. Perhaps because there's a great us v. them narrative implicit in it. I suspect what initially birthed it was a basic misapprehension common to people who have great faith in their own intelligence and opinions - that of needing to ascribe stupidity to people who don't seem to share viewpoints.

I won't bother citing because it's literally overwhelming, but it's pretty clear that there are many companies producing software with the long-term view in mind, and I bet every single one of them is subject to schedule issues.

I've certainly been on teams with long-term thinking embedded in the process and spent time explaining delays, which is of course merely an anecdote, but rather suggestive of things not being as black and white as you'd like to present them.

edit: minor wording cleanups

<comment><USER8> 'such a popular misconception amongst the nerd set'

Um, maybe its just been the places I've worked at, but I've been repeatedly told "we should ship software rather than get everything perfect".

I agree, at the same time, most if not all of the problems I've encountered (including ones I've built for myself) have been because of this impatience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bret the Hitman Hart gave some insight into the games industry in the 90s: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdIGG36GgU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdIGG36GgU)

<comment><USER10> Hearing a wrestler say "you dereferenced a null pointer" made my day.

<comment><USER11> (1:40)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Because he's finnish it reminds me of this 1993 video of Future Crew making the PC demo "Second Reality":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU?cc_load_policy=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU?cc_load_policy=1)

(There's high quality english subtitles there.)

Finished product:

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=63](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=63)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA)

</comment><comment><USER13> "at least two natural languages"

I'm half that good!

It seems like our profession hasn't changed much at all. Makes me feel like I'll be well prepared for the workplace 40 years in the future.

<comment><USER14> My favorite part was when he answered he has a high school diploma. He mentions he has five years in university but all you really need is a high school diploma.

As someone who spent five and a half years (first four for a BS mathematics degree and a year and half for BS computer science degree) as an undergraduate student, it makes me happy to hear professionals say that.

K-12 school is just as important as ever. I just wish we started second language instruction at lower grades. It could be Spanish, French, German, Mandarin... It'd be nice if we started much earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "A negative side is that the work is extremely tiresome, and there are pressure problems all the time. Mental health problems are well known in this business."

Is he suggesting this work is the cause of mental health issues? Seems to me almost every techie I know has below average mental health. Chicken-egg problem here.

<comment><USER8> Hmm. If mental health precludes the ability to think logically, then what does that say about the supposed mental 'health'. If, conversely, healthier people are more logical, then maybe they should be programming instead?

Conundrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Too much pressure, too many meetings, projects coming in behind schedule. Must have been awful in those days.

Do all those people look like they actually hate their jobs, or is this just a Finnish manner?

</comment><comment><USER17> This video is incredible!

Many years later, and we are still struggling to solve the same software engineering problems, per example, project delays.

The video also shows that, in 1973, the requirements changed all the time. People had a lot of meetings, and they think that programming is a lot about teamwork and collaboration. Requirements analysis, before it had this name.

</comment><comment><USER18> The guy makes it sound like he's just making whatever the designer tells him, like a robot.

In reality there's a lot of back-and-forth. This is easy, this is hard, this is impossible, we should reorganize this or that, some development path requires more investigation, etc.

If I was a kid watching this I'd conclude it was stressful and subservient.

</comment><comment><USER19> Things seems to not have changed so much. We spend more time designing and planing things that it takes to implement them.

</comment><comment><USER20> Oh god... just as depressing as it is today.</comment>


Apple Allows the World's Most Popular Bitcoin Wallet Back Into Its Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/07/blockchain-back/

<comment><USER2> > Today, he acknowledges that Apple's about-face could be related to changes > in the regulatory environment, but he thinks Apple's new attitude comes down > to one thing: Android.

I'd imagine nearly no one is buying Android phones because you can get a Bitcoin app for them. Chances are good Apple's lawyers said "shut it down, we need to figure this out first" and this is the end result. No conspiracy theories required.

<comment><USER3> > I'd imagine nearly no one is buying Android phones because you can get a > Bitcoin app for them.

No, they're buying Android phones for just about every other reason (approx 80% marketshare according to IDC [1])

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-v-android-market- share...](http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-v-android-market-share-2014-5)

<comment><USER4> Most of the "reasons" being money. Android phones are mostly sold to the "unwashed masses" who just want a cheap phone and get some low/medium spec Android phone with their contract.

You cannot really compare something sold in 200 models and 50 price points to something sold in 5 models and 5 price points. It will be like saying people buy more Toyotas than Mercedes. Well, of course they do.

Here's another data point: this 80% of marketshare is reversed when considering profits.

<comment><USER3> > Here's another data point: this 80% of marketshare is reversed when > considering profits

Actually, not true. iOS only controls about 52.7% of the revenue share -- however Android has been creeping up every quarter and now places like Forbes and BusinessInsider are predicting Android will overtake iOS in revenue share in not too long.[1]

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-revenue- android-2014-4](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-revenue-android-2014-4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Be warned, the security of this app is not great. It stores your Blockchain.info password and your app's PIN in plaintext on your phone, retrievable over USB. It also stores an encrypted copy of your Bitcoin wallet right next to the plaintext password (which can be used to decrypt the wallet). I haven't checked, but I imagine these files might be included in iTunes backups of the device too.

The sandbox keeps it safe from other apps, but you are 100% insecure on a jailbroken device.

They did add a new PIN lock to the app, but again this is not used to encrypt your private key and is only a UI lock.

<comment><USER6> That does sound pretty poor. However, if the app stores its data in /Documents and you have a lock on your phone (preferably complex passphrase / touch ID) then the app's data should be encrypted on your device.

<comment><USER7> Didn't the recent "scandal" about those usb "backdoor" services show that this isn't good enough; you need to set those explicit NSFileProtectionComplete attributes?

<comment><USER8> The usb "backdoor" applies only to computers you have specifically authorized by unlocking the phone and tapping "trust this computer." If you can unlock the phone, you could just transfer yourself the contents of the bitcoin wallet anyway.

<comment><USER5> Well, if you have access to an unlockable phone, this would get you access to the Blockchain app's data despite the app's PIN lock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps this time they didn't blatantly violate Apple's rules by including major functionality that was completely hidden until enabled on the server, and not turning that on until after review. Apple wants to review the app users are going to see.

Previous discussion from back when that happened: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7194085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7194085)

</comment><comment><USER10> they are very wary of any app that could be using digital currency to act as "in-app-currency" which undermines apple's in-app-purchases

<comment><USER2> Oh, bull. It'd be significantly easier to use credit cards for IAP than Bitcoin. Apple prevents this easily with the _review process_.

<comment><USER10> yes, they require using IAP and will reject any app trying to circumvent it.

I was just making the point that apple is allowing wallet apps but they're still not approving (to my knowledge) any apps that let you replace IAP functionality with crypto transfers.</comment></comment></comment>


SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Program Could Start a Space Junk Disaster - <AUTHOR> https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/17951-spacex-starlink-satellite-space-junk-disaster <comment><USER2> This does not deserve a sensationalist depiction. Everyone in space industry, astronomy and even the public now thanks to this terrible movie Gravity knows about the Kessler effect.

Some thoughts:

\- Putting 12000 big freezers (900 pounds at most) in orbit is never going to "crowd" the place; imagine these objects on Earth, then the claim that on a much higher radius sphere these could be seen at any point seems ridiculous. (I am not speaking about speed or dangerosity, which even up the numbers a bit, or powerful light-emitting projects)

\- In that sense, the video displayed is annoyingly misleading.

\- The danger of the Kessler effect is a long term one, and as such it seems purely economic to me. Increasing the number of space debris will gradually increase the probability of collisions, and raise the costs of space industry, in an upwards trend that may at some point represent a real financial burden. This is the only question: at which point does it become economically interesting to tackle this problem, and are we not underestimating the future costs at this point ?

\- My take is not yet, and SpaceX will do fine managing their 12000 space fridges.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/nov/15/space-j...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/nov/15/space- junk-apocalypse-gravity)

</comment><comment><USER3> The USAF Space Command tracks orbital objects[0]. Adding more satellites would certainly increase their workload, but they regularly upgrade systems to handle it. Here's the ribbon cutting on Maui for one upgrade:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwWby884p6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwWby884p6I)

Like most mountains in Hawaii, it's on top of a volcano. So Madame Pele had to be appeased.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillance_Network)

</comment><comment><USER4> It is also worth considering, that of the planned 12k satellites, only 4k will be in a higher orbit where long-living space junk can be created. The vast majority of the satellites will be in an orbit about 200 miles over ground where there is some minimal atmospheric drag, cleaning up any possible. Even without any other action taken, these satellites will reenter the atmosphere after 5-10 years on their own.

Those satellites in the higher orbits require some care though. They wouldn't deorbit on their own and any space junk from collisions would stay around an extremely long time. For those sent up by SpaceX, there would be plenty of space, but if there are enough competing companies, things could get quite crowded. Of all people though, I would think that Elon is the most considerate about long-term environmental impact. After all, he doesn't want to block the path for his own Mars rockets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is he really? Why then did he fire managers who evidently preferred quality over speed? Time and again in 2018, Elon has proved to make bad decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not directly related to the article, but for a neat visualisation of all the objects in Earth orbit right now see [http://stuffin.space/](http://stuffin.space/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like FUD to me.

Consider that 11,000 satellite-sized objects are spread over the surface of the earth-- given an entire lifetime to search, how many do you think you could find?

It helps a little to imagine it as people instead of objects. Imagine there are only 11,000 people on earth instead of 7 billion-- just the population of one small town, spread over all the oceans and all the continents. Do you think you would ever find even one of them?

Then consider that orbital height expands the "surface area" of this satellite spread by an enormous amount....the surface area of a sphere at LEO is substantially larger than the surface area of the earth. I don't know the exact numbers, but I know it's a huge difference.

So the odds of ever finding any would be substantially lower.

I don't think this is something we have to worry about, even if it was 100,000 satellites.

But...I'm not an expert on orbital mechanics. I could be wrong, for sure. Just seems suspect to me.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that these 11000 objects are moving among the existing ones. Some are nearly stationary on a geostationary orbit, while the LEO objects tend to zip around on wildly different orbits. So they are not sitting there, waiting to be found, but each object has a certain chance each orbit to hit some other object. These probabilities go up the more we put in orbit.

<comment><USER8> Bad explanation; the LEO and the Geostationary satellites will never ever bump into each other; they are in completely different orbits that never cross. Furthermore, we don't just randomly chuck these things into orbit without any thought or consideration. They do not 'have a certain chance each orbit' to hit something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For a better article, definitely read [https://mashable.com/2018/03/06/starlink-spacex- satellites-o...](https://mashable.com/2018/03/06/starlink-spacex-satellites- orbital-debris/)

</comment><comment><USER9> This si full FUD and I don't known the author objective. Those satellite will be in low orbit where one of there big problem will be to keep theire orbit. Their end of Life depend on how much fuel they have, and when they have no more fuel they decay. Or takes only some months (or at most a des years for the ones in higher orbit) to burn in the athmospher.

The only problem Witness so much satelite in low orbit si tracking them during their life which us easy for thoses as they require precise tracking for being operational.

</comment><comment><USER10> > The only real solution companies like SpaceX has when disposing of a > satellite when it's outlived its usefulness is to let them get pulled into > the atmosphere and burn up on re-entry, but when it comes to managing 12,000 > of them at once (and 4,000 in higher orbits, where they're less likely to > get pulled down naturally), how many will slip through the cracks?

This is the only real solution _anyone_ has. It's just not feasible to do anything else other than park the satellite in a graveyard orbit or deorbit it.

<comment><USER11> The entire premise of the article is daft and ignorant of basic orbital mechanics. The Starlink satellites will communicate with each other directly via laser. They can only do that by knowing very precisely where they and the other satellite are, so the whole constellation will have to be continuously tracked at high precision just to function at all.

<comment><USER10> That is, if all the satellites are functioning. Those that aren't do actually end up becoming space junk.

<comment><USER12> Onjects in LEO don't really become space junk because there's enough atmosphere to force a natural decay of the orbit for most objects within a human lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anything could, a soyuz rocket exploding would invalidate any launches for the next 5 to 10 years. Boom and shards all over the atmosphere.

<comment><USER11> If the shards are in the atmosphere, they'll fall to the ground immediately. Even the IIS at over 300km altitude needs a boost every now and then to maintain altitude due to the drag of the rarefied atmosphere that high up. Very few satellites are put in orbits below 300km because they'd only stay up for a few years or less.</comment></comment>


Apple will reportedly use 12-core 5nm ARM processor in a 2021 Mac - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/23/21232441/apple-arm-mac-2020-5nm-processor-12-cores <comment><USER2> I'm very interested to see if they're going to have some sort of x86 compatibility baked in, or if they decided that engineers, as a market segment, are a rounding error that they're comfortable writing off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apple has had no issue forcing developers to follow their way. Take the transition to x86 itself for example.

<comment><USER2> Prior to the x86 transition, Macs weren't very useful to developers. Designers, yes, but I never saw an engineer using a Mac before that switch, now I rarely see an engineer with something other than a Mac. Switching off x86 will likely throw that userbase out the window for Apple.</comment></comment></comment>


Matt Ridley on Early Humans Leaving Africa - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577192960294508268.html?mod=lifestyle_newsreel

<comment><USER2> Personally, DNA analysis is pretty interesting and is easy to get into right now, even if we are still at the cusp of a $1000 genome sequence. I've used FTDNA and once you have your results you can follow real work pertaining to your own ancestral group. There is a lot of activity on dna-forums.org and it really shows how much history one does not know when reading some of the discussions. I encourage more people to get into it to increase the pool of results available.</comment>


Show HN: Athsee – Share your sporting journey - <AUTHOR> http://www.athsee.com <comment><AUTHOR> We are a team (of athletes) aiming to create a better connection between athletes and their friends, family and fans. Why? We are frustrated that it's difficult to follow an athletes journey through current social media because it doesn't have context that an athlete competes in events, has results, trains etc. We are aiming to improve this with the Athsee App by allowing athletes to share their sporting journey with people who wish to follow them - friends, family or fans!

Athsee is in it's early days but we have a few features already available for you to try:

\- Create posts about your upcoming events to let your followers know when you are competing next

\- GPS Live tracking including live photo/video sharing to share your event live and in real time with your followers

\- Engagement through following, liking and commenting

The aim is to be a space for all athletes of all sports - currently though the app is optimised for runners and cyclists

Our future plans are to have a space where you can post not only your upcoming events but your results too. The live function will grow to include live posting of an event so that athletes can post commentary along the way.

We are looking for athletes to start using the app and to help us make Athsee everything an athlete wants. We are encouraging feedback - questions, suggestions and anything else to help us make something that you want to use.

<comment><USER2> Slick app you've made there Matt! Will give it a go this weekend!</comment></comment>


The Case for Karma Points: The Only Card Reward That Makes a Difference - <AUTHOR> https://community.expensify.com/discussion/5984/the-case-for-karma-points-the-only-card-reward-that-makes-a-difference <comment><AUTHOR> Meta: fake it til you make it? How do y'all feel about blatant lies about a product? I just can't imagine myself doing what he said he did. And his story of that kind of start makes me not trust the product today.

> "This new iPhone thing, does it support it?"

> Even though it doesn't have an app store yet so it's impossible, "Yes we > totally have an iPhone app."

> "Does the app scan receipts?"

> Even though the original iPhone's camera was so bad it made completely > illegible receipt images, "Yes, totally we scan receipts."

> "Does it reimburse through ACH?"

> I've never heard of those letters before, but "Yes we totally do that."

> "Does it export to accounting?"

> "Yes, it obviously exports to QuickBooks and… you know, all the others."

<comment><USER2> > And people loved [the fictional product I presented]. Strangers came up and > hugged me, talking about how much time they thought I was going to save > them.

That sounds quite unrealistic.</comment></comment>